My thoughts, ramblings, reviews, critiques, cracks, opinions, jokes, quotes, rhymes, rhythms, songs, sorrows, poetry, prayers and other musings on life in this postmodern existence of ours in these United States of America.

Neither I nor Amy did much to celebrate the New Year. She had to work on New Year’s Day, therefore needed to get to sleep at a normal time so we just had some wine and watched the East coast feed of the ball drop in Times Square and then made our ways to bed. And New Year’s Day wasn’t anything special for me, essentially cleaning up the house and doing laundry. Although I did go out and have lunch with my good friend Mike, who is in a very challenging situation and I intended to address that in a future post. But for me the New Year Day celebration comprised of mainly laundry, cleaning, playing a some video games and thinking about what the last year meant and what this new year will mean.

2012 was an interesting yet very challenging year. I turned 31 years old. I got to go out of the country for one of my best friend’s weddings in Mexico. I celebrated 5 years of marriage. I got to have one of my best friends move back to the Southern California area. I began to take a serious leadership role in my local church. I left the family business after working there more than six years. I got to see my middle younger brother, and the last McCormick boy, get married to a woman he adores. And both myself and my wife began new careers wife the County of Los Angeles.

In retrospect a lot happened and now I have a new year to try and set and achieve some real goals.

First and foremost I really want to work on my prayer life. While I have practiced occasionally with I want begin regular centering and contemplative prayer. I have read and studied it and I really want to put it to use this year.

Along with that I want to begin the exercise of prayer the divine hours, which is a way of praying at set times throughout the day. Just another practice that I want to make regular.

Like just about everyone else in the country I need to exercise more, so I hope to begin some sort of a regular exercise regimen, we will have to see how that one goes. As it is something I have never been good at but I hope to achieve and maybe drop some pound sby the time summer comes around.

Attached to that is my wish for a better diet. Amy has really been on me about eating better and I hope to do this with her and stop eating like I am 10 years younger than I really am.

I want to also work on my relationship in general, both with my wife and with people in general around me. As I age I have come to realize how important relationships are and I want to truly develop stronger more meaningful relationships with those around me.

I do want to get back to reading more. I have been inspired in this by my youngest brother who has become quite the voracious reader. So, my initial goal is to try and read a book every two weeks. We will see how I do on this one.

I also want to write more. While my new job does require more writing than my old one I want to really work at organizing and rational presenting my thoughts. I think it helps clean the brain out and hopefully helps me with my grammar and spelling.

Get back to school, somehow someway I want to be headed back to school by the end of this year. With my goal being to be in a Masters program, hopefully an MBA or MPA by the end of the year or at leats making progress towards that.

And finally I want to strive for honesty and transparency in life. To often we just fake our way through things and I don’t want that I want people to see me and really know what they are getting. But then I want people to get the real me, not some fake version I put out there but the real me.

So that is it, a long list, a tall list, but I want to be committed to it and really try to follow through, and hopefully I am a better person 12 months from now.